


you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

by heartslogos



Series: than all the sky which only is higher than the sky [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Aromantic, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, F/M, Gen, Identity Issues, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Life Partners, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Romance, off screen dubious consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-30 20:18:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6438778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartslogos/pseuds/heartslogos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>here is the deepest secret nobody knows</i><br/>(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud<br/>and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows<br/>higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)<br/>and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart</p><p> </p><p>- e. e. cummings</p><p>Lavellan's side of <i>whose texture compels me with the colour of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

**Author's Note:**

> i carry your heart with me(i carry it in  
> my heart)i am never without it(anywhere  
> i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done  
> by only me is your doing,my darling)  
> i fear  
> no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want  
> no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)  
> and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant  
> and whatever a sun will always sing is you
> 
> here is the deepest secret nobody knows  
> (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud  
> and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows  
> higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)  
> and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
> 
> i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
> 
> \- e. e. cummings

She is sitting on the rail of her balcony, and dawn is spreading, like the hair of a woman, over the pillows of the mountains. She watches the sky change colors, unblocked by leaves or branches, stone or thatched roof, tent or even the scars of the sky. The clouds part for the sun and the yawning dawning rose-quartz flush of the morning like grass through the fingers.

The air is cold but _good_ , fresh, refreshing, on her skin. And it is silent, except for the hum of the mountains, the sky.

Even Skyhold, below her, is peacefully quiet.

She glances down and she can see the blooming flush of the garden – _her_ garden, she thinks, as she thinks about hours spent with her knees and her fingers in the dirt, digging and nurturing, whispering to flowers half open, sprouts with their leaves still half-trapped in their seed shells, leaves folded together, tightly closed like newborn fists and eyes – from here. She looks down and around and she sees the sleepers of Skyhold and she feels.

She feels so at _peace_.

She feels _home_.

Once, a long time ago, she told Cassandra that home was wherever she is. It was a lie then. She didn’t know better. She thought that if she said a place – a people – it would be dangerous.

Lavellan did not know Cassandra then.

Cassandra would not hurt them to hurt her.

She did not know Cassandra – Cassandra who wants to throw the doors open to every building for those who need sheltering hearths, Cassandra who wants to put bread and meat and warm, warm soup into the mouths of everyone who needs it. Cassandra who would strip all the gold off of every city of Orlais to make the winters something you don’t have to _survive_. Cassandra who reads with her fist close to her mouth with excitement, and does voices for Cole when he asks. Cassandra who sits with Cullen late into the night and is quiet when he needs it, but talks to him about everything he needs when he’s ready to hear her. Cassandra who struggles and trains so hard because she knows what loss is and what she stands for.

Cassandra, who has spilt so much of her own blood to keep Lavellan’s own where it should be.

It is hard to remember where she and Cassandra started.

But now those words ring true.

Finally, she knows. Home _is_ wherever she is. It is _inside of her_.

She’s understanding that, now. Who _she_ is. What she is allowed to be.

And most of all -

“It’s okay to love him.” Cole says and she reaches for him, and he is solid underneath her fingertips as she slides her fingers around his wrist, feeling the prickle of his fine hairs and the faint and almost uncertain – as if Cole did not know what one was – pulse underneath the pads of her fingers. Cole is, as always, neither warm, nor cold. He just _is_. “It’s okay to want him.”

“I can’t give him what he wants.” Lavellan says to the morning sun, the fading moon, the winking stars. “I’m not – I can’t understand it. I don’t want it. I can’t do that for him. Sometimes I think I want to.”

“But he wouldn’t want it from you. He doesn’t want you that way. It doesn’t matter to him.” Cole finishes her thoughts. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye. “He’s waiting for you. Just like you’re waiting for him. Watching, waiting, so much anticipation – as if waiting for the sun to rise through clouds in a winter day. It will be warm, and it will be gentle. Violent at first, a sudden thing that sears the eyes and startles the sky into changing colors, sends the stars and the moon flying away. But then it is gentle and inevitable and it is _everything beautiful in this world combined into a single breath of mountain air_. Coloring the world pink and flush.”

Cole looks at her, eyes watery and clear and _true_ in the way only Cole can be. His heels kick a beat off of the balcony.

“They would be happy for you.”

Lavellan smiles back. _They_ is a hurt that will always be there. But it is – not as painful, now.

She is learning to understand. She can look back on them and understand. She loved them. But she feared them. She was happy with them. But she was also afraid to be angry. They hurt her, and she had allowed it.

“Cole, you are a terrible liar. But thank you, for trying.” She leans against him, resting her cheek on his bony and angular shoulder. Cole is awkward as he tries to hold still. “He isn’t Dalish. He isn’t even an elf.”

“He has pointy ears.” Cole replies.

Lavellan laughs, leaning back, legs stretched out towards the horizon – Cole turning and holding her so she doesn’t tip and fall either way. She laughs to the changing sky and the fading moon and the yawning sun and the faded stars.

“They are.” She says in between breaths, slowly sliding off of the balcony and onto the stone floor to stretch out and curl and roll with her laughter. Cole slides down after her and she holds her arms open for him and they tangle together under the morning sun as she laughs and he smiles with pride at making her laugh. She bumps their noses together as she rolls away from him, hand resting on her belly as she catches her breath.

“Cole.” She breathes out. “I love him.”

“You should tell him that.” Cole says, gently putting his hat over his belly before he folds his hands over it. “It would make him bloom. The smell of grass and the dampness on the knees. Soaking through, mud that is clean and dirty at once, cooling and drying onto skin like another layer of self. Good and honest and pure work. It doesn’t hurt. No one is hurt. The sun rises and slides through leaves like a butterfly, a kitten, a clever fox. _Play with me_ , the sun says and you say _yes_ , the velvet of the secret places of leaves and the prickle of the delicate places of stems rubbing soft felt onto your fingertips. _Yes_. The silk and satin of flower petals, still stuck together, then flicking apart suddenly as they throw themselves open, _yes_. The pale insides and the violent vibrant colors of the center, the deepest center, the truest center, everything leading to that one single point in the center, _yes_. How could I have ever not been this?”

Lavellan closes her eyes.

And every voice that is hers, that she understands to be hers, says _yes_.

“No.” She whispers, opening her eyes to Cole’s soft frown of confusion. “Not in the middle of a war, Cole. When I _know_.”

“He will stay.”

“Yes, but will I?”

-

He knows that she is watching him. He wouldn’t be a spy if he didn’t, right? Lavellan curls, arms loosely wrapped around the sharpened end of one of Haven’s wooden wall posts, half listening to Cullen drilling the Inquisition’s soldiers and templars, and half listening to everything else. She pushes away the sounds of the Chantry sisters and their eternal prayers, and the idle chatter of people coming and going.

She’s listening for animals, mostly. There don’t seem to be a lot near the Breach.

Maybe they’re afraid. Maybe they can sense something is wrong with it.

There are nugs, because there are always nugs, and that’s a good thing because if you get very hungry one nug can feed a family of four.

Lavellan watches him and considers everything she knows about him that she’s gathered from talking to the members of his group that she’s managed to talk to alone. His lieutenant – _call me Krem, your worship_ – mostly.

She had asked, again if he was an honorable man.

Krem had repeated his earlier answer to her.

But what is honor? She, herself, is not sure if she knows.

Does the Iron Bull know?

She brings her sleeve to her wrist and idly gnaws at the leather cuff, the clothes of the shemlen don’t fit quite right. They don’t move the way she expects them to. But she couldn’t find the pack with her own clothes that she had hidden in the woods before the Conclave.

It is partially because she doesn’t quite remember where she hid it, and partially because she’s fairly certain that it was lost in the blast radius of – _whatever_ happened there.

“He won’t bite.” Lavellan glances down at Cullen, who has been making a large circle around the small training grounds. He always stops a few feet away from being directly underneath her. She watches him.

Cullen is an honorable man, or at least, she thinks he is, based on what she has heard of him, what he has said when she has spoken to him, and what she has seen him do.

“No.” Lavellan agrees, because she would have to be close enough for him to bite and she is not. She is here. “Cullen, what is honor?”

The man looks at her, startled, and sometimes it is very hard for her to keep her thoughts in line.

“Never mind.” She says, looking away from him, to the Breach – it hurts her eyes –, then back at the frozen lake, and then at the tree line.

“I think, my lady,” Cullen begins to say, slowly and carefully. Cullen speaks so carefully. Whenever he speaks there’s gravity, weight. A certain kind of _heft_ to the words that can only come with age and experience and – and just being _tired_ , she thinks. “I think that honor means staying true to yourself. No matter the cost.”

“To be honorable, then, you must then know yourself.” She says, looking at his breast, where the sword would be if he still wore the armor. “Does anyone ever know themselves?”

She doesn’t.

She pushes away at the voice that _cannot be hers_ that tries to whisper dangerous things to her. She pushes it down and binds it with layers of string and chord, closing the doors of memories between it and her. Reminders. She pulls at her sleeves.

“The Iron Bull does.” Cullen says. “And he wants to know you. And everyone around him.”

Lavellan presses her lips together. Cullen dips his head and turns towards the Iron Bull.

“There is a certain kind of confidence that comes from stability, Lavellan. From certainty. Few people have it. But you know them instantly when you speak to them. Their convictions are solid. They are aware of their flaws, their doubts. And they have a certain type of gravity to them that you feel drawn to. Because – because you feel that if they are solid, perhaps you could be, too.”

“They make it quiet.” She whispers under her breath. _Certainty_. _Solidity_.

She is only those things when she is breaking promises – _harellan_. Which she must not do – be.

Cullen looks back at her and his lips are wry, turned up in a lop-sided almost smile. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen Cullen _actually_ smile before. He would be handsome if he did, she thinks. People are always beautiful when they are happy.

“Speak to him, Lavellan. You may be surprised at what you find.”

“Were you?” She raises her head, leaning over the wood towards him. Cullen laughs.

“All the time.”

-

“You know, girlie,” Varric had told her as she was watching him write letters, “Whatever it is that’s troubling you, you should write it down.”

Sometimes it’s still hard for her to look him in the eye. Sometimes she thinks he’s still angry at her. That he’s only nice to her because he thinks that she’s the Herald of his Andraste. It’s hard to think that when Varric is kind to her. He is always kind to her, and to Cole.

“Is that what you do?” Lavellan asked and thought about _The Champion of Kirkwall_ and she thinks about _Hard in Hightown,_ and _Swords and Shields_.

“Something like that.” Varric had replied.

Later Cassandra had told her - “The dwarf is not wrong. If it is on paper, it is no longer in your head. And it is clear and you can understand it better than when it’s just _thoughts_.”

“You overheard us?” Lavellan had frowned because she did not remember Cassandra being near.

“Cole.” Cassandra replied. An answer in a name. Cassandra had hesitated before reaching towards her and gently cupping her elbow in her hand. “Inquisitor, _Lavellan_. We are all worried about you. I like to consider you my friend and I do not mean to overstep my bounds. Whatever troubles you – even if you cannot speak of it to me or to anyone else. Perhaps it would help to just – write it down. And let it out.”

And that is how Lavellan finds herself sitting on an empty parapet, paper and quill unwieldy in her hands as she writes a letter that will never be read. Firstly because the recipients do not know how to read. Secondly because they are dead. So the first point is moot.

 _Mother,_ she writes, slowly as the words that she always struggles to understand and find tangle around in her head like scribbles and tangled string. _He has good, strong hands. Dangerous hands. I have seen him break a man’s arm, snap a neck. I have seen him drive a sword through two people at once. I have seen him break solid wood and I have seen him pick up fully armored shemlen and throw them aside like naked babes._

The letters wobble, like little sticks and Lavellan’s fingers are damp with sweat. Nerves. Cole’s voice whispers through the hallways of her memory, navigating the tangles of string and thread that line the paths like traps.

_They would be happy for you._

So she breathes and sets the pen down again.

 _Father,_ she writes, careful as she tries to pull out a single thread from the jumble of noise inside of her, _He has good, capable hands. Gentle hands. I have seen him lull a frightened horse back to calmness. I have watched him with children at play, as he lets them climb up and over him as if he were a toy for them to play with. I watched him sew patches into his own clothes, the clothes of his people. I have watched him sharpen his sword and oil the leather of his armor. When he touches me -_

Lavellan breathes and her eyes sting.

_Keeper, when he touches me I think that he would love me if I told him that I was a bear. A wolf. A snake. A doe. A raven. When he touches me, I think he would be just as gentle if I had wings or claws or scales or hooves. When he touches me I feel like I can be anything I want to be, and I would remain myself. When he kisses me, I am not afraid. I am the sun._

She can feel the tears and her heart slows in her chest. The tangle grows into a tighter knot, smaller, but that’s only because it’s running out of thread. She’s picking the thread apart.

 _Clan Lavellan, lethallin,_ her hand writes on its own, _you were wrong about me. You said that I did not want it because I had been possessed by the spirit of the bear, that I had lost myself in the change. You said that I had been corrupted and that I must be made pure again so I was made to be reborn out of the earth. You were wrong. I am not corrupted or lost. I am the bear. I have always been the bear, the wolf, the snake, the doe, the raven. I will always be the bear, the wolf, the snake, the doe, the raven. I can be all of them and the woman and I would not be wrong._

She closes her eyes and pushes the paper away, leaning forward to breathe. The knot is unraveling, and the threads are falling away.

Her voice is so clear. She doesn’t think she’s ever been more clear.

 _Mother, Father, Keeper, Clan,_ her hand writes, _He is a good and honorable man. And he does right by me. The first one. If you could see him the way I do – I do not think there are words to describe the way I feel when he sees me, or the way he feels underneath my fingertips. I do not think there are words in any language to tell you the color of the sky when I wake up next to him, or the color in my chest when I look at him. He is beautiful. I would chose him. Over you, over tradition. Never again will I submit. Il tel’him, ir lasa mala revas._

Lavellan climbs Skyhold’s walls and climbs down onto the rooftop over the garden. She moves from the rooftop to one of the trees, the tree she sat under so long ago and made string while the Iron Bull watched, and she ties the letter – folded into a long strip – around one of the branches. Let it go where it goes.

She is free of it, now.

-

Lavellan skids to her knees, ducking down low to avoid the last dying breath of the Frostback. She grinds her teeth against the sting.

Dagna is most likely going to be very, _very_ upset about the state of her armor when they get back to Skyhold.

Maybe she’ll be happy that Lavellan brought back some dragon parts? Dragon parts are rare, aren’t they? Hard to get a hold of?

Dagna should have fun working with those.

“It’s over.” Cassandra calls out a few moments later. Her ears are ringing with the silence. Lavellan pushes herself up, and half-crawls, half-stumbles her way to the wreckage underneath a cliff overhang. Her feet and limbs splash into muddy water as she shoves her arm under the Iron Bull and pushes him upright, out of the water.

“Are either of you hurt?” Vivienne asks as she limps her way over, leaning on her staff. Her normally pristine clothes are covered in mud and ash. Lavellan grunts -

“Help me get him up.”

Together, Vivienne and Lavellan manage to drag Bull out from underneath the cliff wall, out of the water, and onto a relatively dry, not too close to a dying fire, spot of grass.

“Head wound.” Vivienne clicks her tongue as they lay him down. Lavellan puts his head on her lap, gently feeling around to the back of his skull.

His face is slack and there are bruises, dark and purple and red over his skin.

“I don’t feel blood.” Lavellan says, frowning as she looks at her hands.

“You didn’t see, but I did. He hit the rock with his shoulders.” Vivienne eases herself down and touches the juncture of Bull’s shoulder and neck. “And twisted  his neck poorly, here.” She touches the side and back of the Iron Bull’s head. “Still. Better off than you, darling. He’s built for this kind of abuse. If it were you, we’d be scraping you off the rock and bringing you back to Haven in a burlap sack.”

Lavellan _knows_ that.

“Why did he do that?” Lavellan asks, looking down at his face. She takes her gloves off and feels his skin, testing and carefully sending out slow waves of healing mana. Healing is not her forte, and she’s running low on energy as it is. But she has enough to heal the littlest of hurts. “Why did you do that?”

He doesn’t answer – how could he? He was tossed into stone by the lash of a Ferelden Frostback’s tail, _for her_. She doesn’t – the Inquisition can’t be paying him nearly enough for that. They can’t afford that kind of loyalty. She’s done nothing to deserve that – _why did he do that_ -

He could have _died_.

Lavellan runs her hands over his face, feeling his stubble from almost four days in the valley trying to stop templars and mages from running rampant. She feels the hard, rough planes of his face, the scars. The not-quite smoothness of his skull. The strange texture of his horns -

Her fingers catch on a rough section of the horn that rests almost against her waist. The horn is burned – did it hurt? Does he feel anything in the horns? Is it anything like a halla, or a stag? – singed, really, and she doesn’t even know when that happened. A layer of it flakes off, fine ash underneath her fingertips. But her nail catches on a small chunk that falls off, into her palm.

She holds it in her hand, and it’s soft. So soft. If she isn’t careful, it will break apart.

“Lavellan.” Cassandra’s voice from behind her startles her into almost dropping it. She quickly tucks it into her inner coat pocket, in the small protected pouch where she puts clippings of rare plants. “I’m going to go get help. I’m leaving you and Vivienne here. Will you be alright?”

Lavellan turns, squinting up at Cassandra, who looks remarkably well for someone who just climbed a dragon’s back and stabbed it in _both eyes_. Until it _died_.

“Hurry. We’ll be fine. The Iron Bull has a head injury.” Cassandra’s lips press into a firm line and she nods.

“I’ll bring Stitches.” She says, leaning down and squeezing Lavellan’s shoulder. “You fought very well.”

Not well enough, if the Iron Bull almost died for her, she thinks as she watches Cassandra walk, then carefully build up into a jog, off.

She runs her thumb over the Iron Bull’s jaw, feeling his breath against her skin whenever she passes her hand close to his nose and lips.

She has to be better.

She _will be better_.

This will not happen again.

-

“Let me get this straight,” The Iron Bull says as she adjusts the buckle on her boot, “You are going to go fight a dragon that’s possessed by an Avaar god of war. An Avaar god of war that _killed_ the Inquisitor before you.”

“Ameridan.” Lavellan nods. And she had – she had hoped. She doesn’t know why she did. But she saw him, there, and she wanted to ask him a thousand different questions and she had wanted him to stay.

Keeper always said that if you wanted to learn something, turn to the master, but she wants to learn to be the Inquisitor of Thedas and there weren’t any of those left. Until Ameridan.

How did he reconcile his gods with the Maker? How could he do that? How did he come to accept them both? Lavellan, personally, has a hard time dealing with the ones they already have, let alone the Maker. The Maker has hurt them. Why does he praise him? What was it like working with Templars, then, when he was a mage himself? How did Ameridan navigate all the shemlen politics? What about the Dalish politics? What clan was he from? Did Ameridan know anything about the city of the gods? How did Ameridan choose who was at his side? How did he become Inquisitor? How did he lead them? How did he get them to follow?

But he was gone, memory between her fingertips and she was left with a god out for blood.

Such is life.

“And you aren’t taking me.” The Iron Bull says.

“No.” She confirms.

“Why?”

“You aren’t good against the cold.” Lavellan says.

The Iron Bull’s silence tells her everything she needs to know without her having to actually turn and face him.

“Cassandra is a professional dragon slayer, it’s in her blood. Vivienne is good with fire and with protection spells.” Lavellan wraps her scarf around her neck, pulling it up over her mouth and nose. “And Sera can turn into a literal walking torch.”

He grumbles, and she turns to face him and thinks about Ameridan’s words. His advice. To protect her time in this world, and what is important to her.

She turns and he’s standing close enough to feel warm next to, as he adjusts her scarf, fingers brushing her skin.

Lavellan reaches up and touches his chest, because she is beginning to understand. The knots that have been holding together are loosening and she is not yet – she cannot look or listen to them directly. Not yet. But she is beginning to find the words, scattered, and put them together into meaning again.

“Andaran atish’an.” She whispers, feeling his slow heartbeat underneath her hand. His skin is, as always, so warm to the touch. How could any living being ever be so _warm_ without being burning?

 _Sunrise over cold mountains_.

“Aneth ara.” She lets her hand drop and the Iron Bull probably knows those words but he does not know them the way she means them. How could he, when she, herself, is not yet ready to know?

“Come back in one, not frosted over piece, Boss.” He says. “Your feet are fucking cold enough as it is at night.”

-

He is nothing like she could have ever imagined.

Lavellan watches from the cliff as he and his Chargers take down Venatori after Venatori, blood and rain sliding and washing away with sea foam. She can hear him even over the sound of the heavy rain and the occasional crash of thunder, over her own heartbeat.

Lavellan watches, kneeling in the wet grass and mud, mana pushing through her to keep her from going numb from cold.

He laughs. He swings, and water slides over so much gray and black marked skin – she has never seen tattoos like those, they are, of course, not Dalish, but she has never seen a shemlen or a durgen’len with those kind of marks. He swings and she makes out the semi-familiar figure of his Lieutenant swinging what looks like a giant bone or a bleached boulder tied to a large branch. Crude but effective, she thinks as she watches him fell a Tevinter soldier.

She knows she certainly wouldn’t be getting up after getting hit with that.

His horns remind her of a bull, and perhaps that’s the reason why he is called the Iron Bull. But they also remind her of the dragon she saw the first time she came to the coast.

And with the way he swings his large sword, laughing and plowing through enemies, cutting through rain and sea foam and blood and bone -

The resemblance is eerie.

“We should help.” Lavellan says, as she sees more Tevinter soldiers coming from down the coast line.

“I dunno, kid. Looks like they’ve got it handled pretty well.” Varric says, but she hears the distinct sound of him loading a bolt into Bianca. “But sure, why not. We came all this way.”

Lavellan does not like to fight. She wishes she did not have to.

But she is good for little else.

So she moves, quick, sliding down the steep mud and grass and root and gravel side of the cliff and roll-tumbles to her feet with lightning on her fingertips.

He is a Bull, a Dragon.

What is she?

-

She spreads herself out over him, feels his bare skin against hers and spreads her hands over his chest, fingers as wide splayed as they can be and she cannot cover scars and skin and sinew with her hands. He lies there, arms open, body relaxed and open for her – opening to her, and she tries to understand.

“Red string.” She whispers, and she can feel his breathing with the insides of her thighs and she wants to understand – she is not at fault, it is not her. She isn’t wrong. She just – she just hasn’t had it taught to her the right way yet. Keeper’s voice – whispers, cautions, commands her – _someone will. Someone always will_.

Yes, Keeper, I believe you, I do.

“They want it.” She says, focusing on feeling the rise and fall of his chest, digging her fingers – testing muscle and skin and twitches of hands and fingers as he lies under her. “They want it from you. Even when it hurts? And they can _choose_ for it to hurt? And they do?”

“Sometimes it’s good because it hurts.” The Iron Bull says to her, and she frowns because she cannot imagine a hurt that is good. It is all just hurt. She has never been hurt and have it felt good. “Some people are into that.”

He leans his neck upwards to look at her, tilting his head so his eye can see. The one eye between the three of they share that sees anything right.

“You aren’t into anything. You don’t have to understand. It’s alright not to. Not everyone does. Lots of people dont.”

Lavellan presses herself down and low and breathes in cold air and feels the pebbling of his skin.

“They want it from you. They _enjoy it.”_ Frustration. Why?

Pleasure is for outside. Stars and trees, quiet and quick – away from all the eyes and ears and walls. She has seen, heard – hiding in the woods. She knows. Everyone knows. Pleasure is for _there_.

And inside is _purpose_ – not choice – but ritual and ceremony like what the Iron Bull uses -

Hands. Hands. So many hands. Pushing, holding her down. She isn’t resisting, why do they hold her, why do they push her?

Inside is for _important_ things.  Not pleasure things. Clan business things.

“But _it’s_.” She tries to find the words. The words are always leaving her. They never stay. Her tongue is never the right one.

The Iron Bull understands sometimes not all the time but more than _anyone else has ever understood_. Why?

He waits. She digs the heels of her palms into his chest and -

“I don’t understand.” She feels her voice shrink. “You let them choose to not let it hurt. But it _always hurts_. That’s how it _is when it’s inside.”_

She can feel his interest, his mind moving through her palms – the slow change of flesh into iron as he leans his neck upwards. Looking into her. Into the mess of her, the tangled, jumbled mis-mash of shapes and skins and things that she’s somehow tied together with so much string to become _Lavellan_ even though -

“What happens inside?” He asks her, trying to sit up and she pushes herself down with all the gravity of string and self and _Lavellan_ she has at her disposal and it shouldn’t do anything – he is bigger, vaster than her, he has been and seen more things and she is just – just _Lavellan_ , but he lets her hold him down, lets her touch, lets her try. “Why did it hurt when it’s _inside_?”

“I chose. It was the lesser hurt.” She whispers, how to make him understand? What are the words to explain? Then and _that_? When and _where_?

She had closed her eyes – she had kept them open. She did not cry. Her eyes never stopped being wet. It had hurt inside. It was cold. It was hot. Her skin burned. Her skin froze. Her mouth was sealed.

She slides her body up against his, a purposeful brush of skin and he is iron and she is trying to _tell him._ So she keeps her eyes open and she presses her lips against his and whispers -

“It was this.” She whispers, focusing her eyes on the pores of his skin. And she feels it slipping away. Her vision is changing – wrong for this skin of a woman – and she is losing control, rapidly running out of thread. “I chose it. I chose it.”

She didn’t say _yes_ , but she chose it.

Hands. So many hands. It hurt. It did not stop hurting. But afterwards the fire was warm and they smiled and she was right and it was not cold anymore. And she had pleased them. She did the right thing.

The Iron Bull’s muscles seize under her – she can feel his slow and steady heartbeat begin to pick up, loud through skin - and she cannot take it so she pulls away and rises onto her knees because she can feel it all slipping away. No. How to make him understand?

“I chose.” She repeats, looking anywhere but at his face because she doesn’t know how to make him understand, just like no one can make _her_ understand. And she’s better. She’s better than this, but it’s so hard – why can she never be the shape that people want?

Her skin burns. Longing. Desire. Shame. Hurt.

How can she explain to him? The hands? The hole? The cold? The dark?

The tent? The expectations?

The Keeper told her. She listened.

 _They let her come back_.

“I _chose_. And I wasn’t _wrong_. If I chose different I was – I would be – but I’m not, the Iron Bull. I’m not. _I am not_.” She repeats, standing up, and looks down at him beneath her because she is more than her skin even though she isn’t supposed to be and the room tries to contract on her but she is expanding past it and she is _too much._

He reaches for her but she steps away, stumbles. falls, rolls off the bed and moves. Moves, moves, moves. Her eyes slide over the stone walls.

“I wasn’t wrong. I was right. I wasn’t possessed. I am _me_. I am _me_. The Iron Bull – I am _me_ and I chose _me_ and I wasn’t wrong. I proved it.” _Do you understand_? “I did not want it, but I chose because I wanted the other one less, so I picked the tent and everyone knows what happens in the tent and I was the last of my generation, the Iron Bull. My blood came late, and I was the last and I had spent the fall as a bear and the Keeper said I was _corrupted_ , but I wasn’t. I proved it.”

She stops and breathes and her skin is sliding away from her, why can she never hold onto it?

She looks at him, looking at her, sitting up, moving stone and iron, and she wants him to understand.

It hurt so much.

She curls her fingers into her arms and focuses on making the words that try so hard to run away from her.

“I proved that I was of Lavellan. That I was _true_ to Lavellan.” She says and he is angry and she can’t make him not angry. He holds out his arms for her. She wasn’t possessed. She still isn’t.

Voices, inside of her, clamoring and painful on the inside of her skull. She did the right thing, she whispers at them as her throat closes. It was the right thing. She is not this. She is – she is two hands and two feet and sharp elf ears and liquid elf eyes and blunt teeth and an upright walk. She is not – she is not.

She goes to him – _I’m sorry, Keeper_   - and she curls herself against his skin and tries to understand the taste of it. If they had a choice, why would they choose that kind of hurt?

“They want it when I give it to them.” The Iron Bull says. “If it hurts, it is because it is the kind of hurt they need. Just enough, never more. They can say _no_. They can choose to leave. I promise. I never hurt them if they don’t say _yes_ and mean it. Saying _no_ will not hurt them.”

He takes her hand and puts the red string in it. She curls it around her fingers, and that helps – she focuses on winding it through each finger, taught, until her hand is red string. She is string.

“I wanted it more than the other option.” She tells him. “But I didn’t want either at all.”

A voice inside of her – _it is not her, it cannot be her, it cannot be allowed to be her, how many times has the Keeper told her this?_ – shivers with the admittance.

The Keeper is not here. The Iron Bull would not tell, even if she was.

 _Safe_. _Always_.

He takes her hand in his and kisses the string that is her hand.

“Kadan.” He breathes, iron walls that help keep her from slipping away. The room is the right color again. She is the right size. She breathes and pushes her face against the secret place underneath the side of his jaw, the soft place where she can feel the beating of his heart. Faster than it should be, but slowing, now.

She presses her lips there.

It’s all she can say right now.

How to make him understand? Choices.

-

She squeezes her wrist and grinds her teeth together. A headache on top of the – the _Anchor_.

The Iron Bull can’t see this. He absolutely must not see this, know about it. At all. It’s a small miracle that she’s kept it from Cole this long – and maybe he is a little suspicious of why she keeps telling him to go _over there_ whenever he finishes doing something, but at least he doesn’t know.

No one must know.

There is so much for her to finish. So many things she has to keep inside of herself.

Lavellan winds the strings of her will around the pain of the Anchor. She cannot let this effect her. She cannot let anyone know.

There is nothing anyone can do about it.

 _Solas_ , the voice inside of her mutters. Bitter and angry. The voice that is slowly and somehow quickly becoming her own. The voice that she is learning to hear in her own sound, not separate, but a different octave. A voice from the lowest parts of the throat, rather than the tips of her lungs. _Hahren would know what to do about it_.

Hahren isn’t here. He isn’t here and that means there is no one to turn to.

Lavellan squeezes her wrist and forces her palm to open, she turns her face away from the harsh light of the Anchor. Bright and demanding. Sometimes her bandages and her glove can’t even dim the light enough.

It’s getting too strong.

It’s going to devour her alive.

And there is nothing she can do to stop it or slow it.

There’s no use in saying anything. Everyone would just be upset and angry and – she doesn’t want that. They’ve all worked so hard to get where they are now. She isn’t going to ruin that with this. The Anchor has taken enough from her.

Lavellan, Inquisitor of Thedas, Inquisitor First-thaw of the Avaar, will decide how she dies.

And when she dies it will be quiet. And no one will know.

Her secrets will remain her own.

 _I love him,_ the voice from the deepest parts of her throat says.

Yes, she agrees. And it would kill him if he knew what was killing _me_.

This is her choice, and she damn well will do everything she can to keep it.

-

The messenger comes as they stop for the mounts to rest and water themselves at about half to noon. For the messenger to have caught up to them so fast, he must have been dispatched after they left.

“A message from the Commander, lady Inquisitor.” The scout says, “Am I to wait for a response?”

“Please.” She says, opening the leather tube and pulling out the sheaf of paper. Cullen’s hand is neat and precise and simple in ways she envies, and it takes her a few seconds to piece together the words.

_The Iron Bull is anxious. Did he not know you were leaving? Should I send him after you?_

Lavellan’s heart sinks. She remembers getting up and leaving him this morning, before the sun even broke across the horizon. He had turned over in his sleep, lying on his belly. One arm was stretched out over her, the other underneath the pillow. One of his legs dangled off the bed and his breathing was deep and easy and warm.

She had hissed him on the brow and taken her clothes and gone to change into her riding gear.

She’s almost surprised that he didn’t know. He’s so good at picking out her secrets. And of course he must have known about the dragon on the Storm Coast. It was there before the Inquisition was.

Surely, at some point, he would have questioned why they hadn’t gone after that one just yet. It’s so close to home and they’ve been aware of it since the start.

Lavellan still remembers the first time she saw it. It was the first dragon she had ever seen in her life. And it frightened her, but it was also – it was also very beautiful. She remembers the lightning, the clash of the titanic dragon and the giant of myths. Two primeval forces fighting before her eyes. Even from so far away the crack of the dragon’s lightning and the sound of its wings could be felt in her breastbone.

She doesn’t think she’s ever seen a more beautiful dragon. Not even now, after killing so many. Though the one in the Exalted Plains was beautiful as well.

That one though, was striking.

Lavellan turns and reaches into her pack to pull out the pencil she uses for sketching plants and objects for study and writes her answer underneath Cullen’s tight writing.

 _No_.

She wants to – this is. It’s for him. But it’s also for her. It’s proof. There’s no point in doing this, if she can’t do it without him. She  made him – herself – a promise. Even though he does not know it.

She would protect him.

She can stand on even ground with him.

And this is -

This is her own personal test to see if that is true. If she can’t get the tooth on her own, if she can’t do this for him – him who has given so much for her, to her – then she has no right to take the name which he has allowed her to have.

Lavellan touches her hand to her breast, where she’s put the two strings – her hair, his horn – and breathes in long and deep and cold. Her heart beats, slow and steady. Certain.

 _No_.

She can do this.

-

Dorian is angry with her and he has every right to be. And right now, Lavellan is angry at Dorian’s father.

What does it matter what someone loves, wants, lusts for? At least they _can_.

Dorian can love. Dorian can _want_.

Lavellan can’t – Lavellan can’t even _think_.

Dorian is upset with her and Lavellan is angry at Dorian’s father and herself. She should have known. She should have sent someone to investigate, she should have told Dorian but she just -

So many of their problems are dealt with with spies and sabotage, assassination and death and blackmail.

Just once, Lavellan wants something to work out. Words.

The always ineffable and intangible words that she can never get right. Not in this tongue or in any other. All the tongues are strange in her mouth. Never hers.

“You didn’t tell him, that’s why.” Sera says, “Anyone would be mad if they got that kind of shitty surprise. I mean, imagine how pissed _your_ parents would be if they knew you were fucking _that_.”

Sera jabs her thumb over her shoulder towards the door to her room and Lavellan frowns.

“I’m not.” Lavellan says. “I imagine my parents would be disappointed enough that _I’m the Herald of Andraste_.”

“Shouldn’t be.” Sera shrugs. “Better than whatever,” Sera gestures at her face, “That is.”

Lavellan curls the chords of her temper tight around her throat. Sera can be very wise and kind when she’s in the mood to be. Clearly now isn’t one of those moods.

Now is not the time to debate gods with Sera.

Right now she has other things to worry about.

“I didn’t know it was his father.” Lavellan peels the thin skin off of a purple grape, rubbing the skin between her fingertips. “I just – I just thought it would. I thought it would help.”

“Not knowing something isn’t always a good excuse.” Sera points out. “Just because you don’t know something doesn’t mean it’s okay. I’m sure he knows you meant to do good, but – sometimes hurt is just hurt. You can’t explain it, you know? Bull’s right. You have to let him work it out on his own. It’s his hurt, not yours. Even if the two are tangled up together.”

“But how _long_ do I wait?” Lavellan presses the grape to her lips, cool juice and tender flesh. “What if it just gets worse?”

“He loves you, you know.” Sera replies, bare toes resting on the top of Lavellan’s foot and pressing downwards. “He really really loves you. That’s why it hurts. It always fucking hurts when people you love hurt you. Maybe that’s why it hurts. But – I don’t think Dorian’s going to cut you off for this.”

Lavellan curls her toes and looks into Sera’s face. “You think so?”

“Yeah. I really do.” Sera smiles, hooking her ankle around Lavellan’s. “He chose you for a reason.”

-

She can _feel_ his disapproval from across Haven and Lavellan hasn’t even had breakfast yet. Lavellan braces herself for it as she makes her way towards Solas’ hut, testing the air with her mana.

His mana is steady, deep and saturated on her tongue, like touching a river stone that has been growing moss or algae underneath a current – undisturbed and unknown for years. Rich.

And it is _irritated_.

Lavellan waits for him to acknowledge her, and when his mana stoically  _snaps_ at hers she bows her head in submission.

“ _Hahren_ , ma ghilana enaste. I await your guidance, teacher.”

“A pity you would not listen to it, even if I were to give it to you.” Solas replies, but he opens the door to his hut and points her towards the medicinal herbs she’s been collecting. “Prepare these while I fetch the tools from Adan.”

“Yes, hahren.” She says and it is like she is back with her clan again, except this time a clan of two and she has not yet had nearly enough exposure to Solas’ moods to accurately predict what he wants and what his goals are for his lessons.

She is gentle as she separates leaf from stem from root, cleaning them slowly of mud and soil. Solas returns and stands next to her, quietly telling her small things about the plants she works with and quizzing her on her depth of knowledge. She knows most things, but not enough. She has spent most of her life in the Free Marches. Some of these southern plants are strange variations of what she knows. And Solas’ uses for them are different from her own.

“You allowed him into our walls.” Solas says. “Do you know what he stands for?”

“I am unfamiliar with the Qun, as I am unfamiliar with the ways of the Chantry and the shemlen.” Lavellan replies. “I only know rumors.”

“Rumors that do not exaggerate or stray too far from the truth.” Solas responds. “There is no freedom in the Qun.”

Sounds like the clan, Lavellan thinks, but does not say. She may not see Solas as a flat-ear, or a shemlen, but he is not of _Lavellan_. These are – these are hers. Not his to know.

“There is only submission, subservience, dictation. You think magic is seen badly _here_? They bind their mages. Literally.” She can feel his temper rising. Lavellan focuses on cutting leaves off of nettle without pricking herself.

“But he is not here for that. He is here because there is a hole in a sky and demons on the ground.” She says. “And is the Inquisition in a place to turn down eyes and ears and arms?”

Perhaps if the situation had been different, if they were approaching from a place of power, she might have considered saying no.

No, that is a lie.

Her heart kicks and she swallows back the multitude of _sounds_ that she has always been so careful to keep bound away. They are not for anyone. They are not even for her.

“We are in the Qun’s hands, practically.” Solas says.

“You say that like I bring him along with me everywhere I go.” She replies, eyes downcast. “As if I throw the doors open to Josephine’s office, or the Chantry war room and show him the table and let him look as he pleases. I haven’t even spoken to him since  he’s gotten here. How can you expect me to judge him one way or the other? Have _you_ spoken to him?”

Solas’ silence is damning.

“He could be different.” She says. He _is_ different.

“It is a lie.” Solas says. “It is a lie meant to fool you, to trick you, to bind you.”

Lavellan is bound by many lies already. She doesn’t think one more would hurt her too badly. She does not say this.

“Then you watch him for me.” She says. “And tell me where he lies. Where he tricks and binds me. I don’t have the time to watch for knives from the inside. I can’t do that and fight the wolves at the door. I am _one woman_.”

-

Lavellan shakes her feathers free and for the first time in what feels like forever feels _good_. Feels free and right – and the sky is no longer a count down towards war, it is a playground. She flies and it feels good. The wind is cool and the valley is colorful beneath her. A patchwork of gold and orange and green leaves, stone and grass.

The horizon yawns before her and sounds fade away, below her. Everything beneath her.

She flies high, and it feels like the sky welcomes her home.

She could leave it all behind.

The image of Haven – that first week, slipping past the guards and exploring the Anchor with all of her secret selves that must not be. A promise to the Keeper, to her parents. To her people.

She was a wolf, a doe, a raven. And every time she made it a little bit farther away. But she always went back.

Duty.

_Shivanas._

Here, she could keep flying. Far from Inquisition’s hands, far from Corypheus. Far from the inevitability she knows whenever she looks Solas in the face. The struggle in Cole’s voice. The derision in Sera’s whenever they fight. She could just leave -

This curse of a title, an unwanted identity, of _Herald of Andraste_ behind.

She cries to the sky and turns, circles to take the world in, in all of its colors.

A spot of gray and black.

 _The Iron Bull_.

She looks at him, so far below her and wants him to be up here with her. But he is not a bird and he has no wings or feathers, so she must go to him.

Lavellan glides down to him, and his face is excited when he holds his arm up for her.

His hands are gentle.

_Atish’an._

-

The Iron Bull looks _angry_ with her, when she opens the door to their – his – room.

The tooth is heavy in her pocket, and its partner is heavy in her hair. She isn’t yet used to its weight, its motion. She had shaved it down considerably, given the Iron Bull the larger half, and worn hers down to a more manageable size. But it is still heavy, large. Important.

Like a heart.

Lavellan turns the word over in her head, and the tooth in her pocket presses against her thigh.

Her throat runs dry as she looks at him and she thinks about Cullen’s letter, the Iron Bull’s deep breathing that night, and the way he said the word that has been missing all her life, and the red string and her own black string, and the clamoring of voices that aren’t clamoring anymore because they are all _her voice_ and she should have known that, should have seen that years ago.

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” She says before he can say anything, pulling the tooth out of her pocket. Her fingers slide over familiar grooves as she cups it in her hands. She is unable to look away from it, this offering of her heart to him because it’s all she has left to give. It seems so small, so important. Her hair around this tooth. What if he says _no_? “I’m sorry I worried you. I almost came back for you, but I – I really wanted to surprise you.”

How many times did she look over her shoulder? How many times did she think something or open her mouth to say something only to realize he was not there? How many times did she see something and think of him?

How many times did she wonder about turning back and getting him and confessing every doubt and hope into his gentle hands?

“Half of a dragon’s tooth.” The Iron Bull says, breathless. He takes the tooth by the chord, fingers slow and hesitant as he slowly raises it into the air, cupping the tooth in his palm as he presses his thumb and runs it over her strings.

“I don’t have a word or a tradition to match yours.” She says, watching as he considers the string, recognition slowly dawning on his face. “I just have my string.”

Slowly, nerves and excitement and hope fluttering their wings in her chest, she reaches past her ear and pulls out the braid from underneath all the other locks of hair – all the other feathers and beads and ribbons and chords of protection, she pulls this one out and allows the tooth to rest on her collarbone, pointed downwards towards her heart.

“That is me.” She points to the thread in his hands. “This is you.”

She pulls at her braid, thumb pressing over the chord woven into her hair.

“The bone.” The Iron Bull says because she doesn’t have to tell him of the day underneath the tree and the promise she did not share with him in words that he could understand. “When did you get it?”

She smiles, because of  course he remembers, of course he has the pieces. Her heart skips and she feels _warm_ all by herself for the first time in ages.

“After the time with the Fereldan Frostback.” Lavellan answers, when you were knocked unconscious. It was flaking off your horn. I didn’t think you’d notice. I just – I took it on impulse. And I kept it. If you said anything about the chip, I would have returned it. But you didn’t. And then I – and then you left the Qun.”

She wove the strands of the thread around the horn, keeping the fragile thing together and safe. Just like how he always keeps her together. Keeps her from scattering at every touch.

“The dragon had burned it.” She said. “It was brittle. I almost didn’t think I’d be able to weave it properly. But I did. And the thread is strong. And  I – ”

She can’t say anymore, not when he’s looking at her like that. The nerves resurface and she is cold again. The warmth draining from her.

And then – he kneels, she almost stops him – _that’s the bad knee, the Iron Bull_  – and holds the string out to her.

Somehow her hands aren’t shaking when she ties the chord around his neck.

She can’t help but stare a little, at his face, and then the tooth, the way it rests on his breast, over his tattoos.

“Do you like it?” She asks. “I – I wasn’t sure if I was doing it right.”

“I do.” He says. “What is in my string?”

“Mulberry.” She answers. Everything strong. Everything binding. Everything wild and true and  _honorable._  “Shavings of iron bark. Dragon’s blood. Leather from wyverns and drakes.”

He touches the string around his neck, considering. “And this one?”

“Roses. Asphodels. Blood. My hair. The feather of a pheonix. Felt from a stag. Skin from a snake.”

Everything that ever changes.

Bull nods, reaches out and cups the back of her neck. Warm, and the cold sings itself out of her body as he leans close and kisses her forehead, resting his brow against hers. Her tattoos against his horns.

“Kadan.”

-

She walks the Lieutenant out of Haven, and watches as he mounts his horse to report back to the Iron Bull.

“Wait.” She calls out to him just as he’s turning his horse away from Haven. She squints up at him, and he looks back to her. Waiting.

“Yes?” He prompts her when she remains silent.

Questions, so many of them. But the words refuse to come.

Why do you follow the Iron Bull? Is he kind? Has he ever hurt you? Is it the money that keeps you? How does he lead? Do you ever want to leave? Do you want to be here? Have you ever wanted to just run away and never look back and become something else? Is he compassionate? Are you friends? Could you ever be friends? Do you love him? Are the leaders of shemlen loved? How do I become loved? How do I become? Can he understand me? Does he understand how to take the words? I cannot make the words, can he make the words, how will we speak to each other? Is he good? Is he patient? Can he wait for me? Will he listen? Even when I do not know what to say?

The words do not come and she stands there, looking at this man on his horse as he waits for her, patient. So patient, she doesn’t deserve it. Any of it. He waits with kind eyes and an encouraging smile and her heart sinks because she cannot put the words through her lips.

The snow is too harsh, too bright, on these eyes that are not a woman’s eyes. She looks away, down, at the horse’s hooves and the Breach’s light makes everything wrong.

“Is he honorable?” Lavellan says, through a mouth full of river stones.

“That,” The Lieutenant says, careful, careful with words in ways Lavellan wishes she knew how to be, “Would depend on what your definition of honor is, my lady. I suppose you’ll see for yourself, when you meet him.”

Lavellan looks up and he nods at her, turning his horse fully and rides away. She watches him go until he is beyond the trees, where the path curves, beyond her sight and her heart longs to leave, too.

She turns back to Haven and _wants._

_-_

The first time she shifts after the Anchor is taken from her, she is alone.

The Iron Bull is behind her and the world, unfamiliar and hostile is before her. Hers to relearn, to understand, to cope with.

Lavellan takes her clothes off and places them at the base of a tree. The sun watches her through shivering leaves and she unwinds the bandages slowly. Carefully. She has not looked at it directly, by herself, before. She isn’t even sure if she will be able to redo the bandages later.

The bandages fall away and reveal the – the remains of herself.

It is ugly, as expected. Brutal. And somehow not encompassing even a fraction of the brutality of what was done to her, her heart, her spirit, her body, in those moments.

Her mind slams the doors of memory shut.

Solas is a memory she is not ready to revist. Fen’Harel is not a memory she is ready to cope with.

There are no more stitches, but the skin looks purple and angry on its own.

Lavellan breathes -

 _Cries_.

She cries, because how does this translate as a wing? Where do the feathers sprout, where does the bone change, where do the muscles go?

Lavellan cries, half a bird and half a woman, crumpled on the ground and it feels like she’s torn it open again. Ripped it open and shoved something inside. It is – it is terrible.

It has never hurt her to change skins like this.

Lavellan is struck with the awful realization that _she can never change skins again_.

Just when she thought the suffering was over – again the world is ripped from under her feet.

Lavellan lies on the ground, naked and shivering as she slowly, painfully, returns to the skin of a woman. It takes what feels like hours. An unnatural change.

The sky has been taken from her. The woods. The mountains. The deep snows and the singing waterfalls. All of it, lost.

For this.

Lavellan snarls, turning away from the direction of the Breach. She would know it in her sleep. The scar on the sky is more than a scar in her chest.

All of it lost for _him_.

Because of him. Him, who she always knew would leave her. Him, who she always knew would hurt her in some way. She could have never imagined the scope, but all of this – for the one she knew. _Knew with absolute certainty_ would never become what she wanted. He would pretend and smile and touch and speak to her as if he was.

The Wolf in an elf’s clothing.

Lavellan wants to laugh at the irony.

The Wolf has taken the wolf from her.

Once, the Keeper said that her affinity for other skins was unnatural, not right. And made her promise to always stay in the skin of a woman, unless circumstances dictated she must to escape death.

Once, Lavellan would have done anything to be what the Keeper wanted. To just be a woman. A woman who desired. A woman who was a woman in every sense of the word.

Now, _now_.

Now, that Lavellan has finally come to understand – she has always been the other skins, they were always her, _there was no divide, when she was them she was still herself, they are all just faces she wore like dresses and shoes_  – now that she has come to see – _she is not a woman because she can give birth. Her ability to birth and her ability to lust are not what make her herself. She is not broken or wrong to not desire. She is not limited by bodies_.

Now -

It is gone. She is, and always will be, the skin of a woman.

_-_

The Exalted Plains are beautiful and war torn, everything Lavellan expected from the Dirth and nothing at all.

Halla graze. There are ruins, graves, and traces of the people wherever she turns her eyes. So much history, a bountiful _wealth_ of it. She loves it immediately.

But -

She feels. She feels out of place, again. Torn down the middle. The clan here – a clan, how long has it been since she has been among her people? How long has it been since she has been able to follow the paths and the ways she grew up with? How long has it been since she could speak in the tongue she used most, how long has it been since she could just _follow_?

They do not want her. They do not trust her.

It burns, shameful and scalding, their rejection.

Solas looks at her as if to say _see?_ And she turns away from him, because it hurts and at least it isn’t Sera.

But she understands. She tries to.

Her people have lost much to human organizations.

She works hard. She works very, very hard and she doesn’t let even a single part of herself slip. She is good. She is very good. She keeps herself bound and knotted together, a woman. A Dalish woman. A da’len.

And Keeper Hawen rewards her for that. He allows her in.

 _See?_ She thinks, at Solas who is not here when she finally earns her way in, earns back her status of _da’len_.

But Keeper Hawen takes her aside. “Da’len. What is the purpose of bringing that here?”

“Of bringing what, here, Keeper?” She asks, confused as the Keeper touches her shoulder and looks past her to where she left Dorian and the Iron Bull. Cole has gone – _somewhere_. Wherever he goes whenever he doesn’t feel like being seen.

“You bring a Tevinter slaver and a Qunari beast to our hearth. I have seen you work. You are honest and you have the possibility to be a hope for our people. But what of them?” The Keeper’s kind eyes turn sorrowful, and the lines on his face are tired. “You do yourself no favors by putting them at your back.”

“They are my friends. My _lethallin_.” She says and she allows every single ounce of love she has pour into the word.

The Keeper removes his hand. _Disappointed_.

She feels herself shrinking.

“Keeper?” Her voice is small and distant.

“Your choice in _lethallin_ , Inquisitor,” The Keeper says, “Is a poor one.”

She wants to protest. She wants to tell him all the ways she loves them both. All the ways they love her, save her, keep her safe. Keep her whole. She wants to tell him all the things they have taught her, all the things they have allowed her to feel.

Words have always failed her. It all jumbles together in her throat and it comes out, slips out – a stray thread – as the soft whine of a wolf.

The Keeper’s eyes are sharp on her and it is over.

So she opens her mouth and lets her eyes change and she lets him _see_ her shame, her flaws, her inability to be _Dalish woman_ , how she has failed to be of the _People_ , and how she is just -

This.

Abomination. Aberration.

“Inquisitor.” The Keeper says. “It is best that you finish your business here, and leave.”

“Yes.” She says, heart curling around the names in her chest. _Dorian. The Iron Bull. Dorian. The Iron Bull_.

Get them away from here, the voice that is and is not her snarls. The voice that must not be allowed to be her. But she agrees with it. Entirely. With every face she has ever had.

Get them away from here.

 _I love them, more than I have ever loved any of you,_ Lavellan thinks as she bows her head to the Keeper and wishes him farewell. A hollow wish. She blasphemes against their gods with every breath, it seems. This time, willingly.

 _I will love them when you are dust,_ Lavellan thinks as she takes Dorian by the arm, and slides her fingers in between Bull’s skin and the thick leather of his belt, and pulls him towards where they kept their mounts. _I will love them – and they will love me. No matter what skin I am. They love me._

-

It is a good day for her, Lavellan can’t help but feel proud and pleased with herself as she walks through stone and enters the war room to meet with the others. She has spent two weeks away, sealing rifts in the Emerald Graves and living with the stars over her and the earth under her with no walls to keep them apart. And not once during these two weeks have the knots and chords that bind her into the body of a woman slipped.

She hasn’t been wolf or bear or raven, in mind or body, for two whole weeks and she hasn’t wanted to be, either. Lavellan is beginning to feel more like a woman, _right_ , again. The Keeper would be proud. She is keeping her promise.

Lavellan has kept herself pure. The spirit has not taken her again. She is _woman_.

And that means it is a _good day_.

And now she has just come back to Skyhold, morning air crisp and good on her skin and she will see the Iron Bull after this and tell him that she has found another dragon for him and he will be pleased with her. And then she will show Solas the strange shards she has found and he will teach her more about them and the world and she will ask Josephine to teach her more letters so she can read the stories Cassandra likes with her so they can talk more about things that are not swords and battles and the Maker, and maybe Sera will even be in a good enough mood that they will get through a conversation without getting angry with each other.

It is a _good day_.

She is unprepared for what happens next.

The world slides out from under her, as Josephine takes her arm and looks her in the eye. Leliana takes her hands and deposits a piece of paper in it.

“I’m sorry.” Leliana says.

Cullen watches her with something she is not willing to name in his eyes.

She is not a fast reader, or the best one by any measure. But it does not take her long to get through the message in her hands.

She feels her good day disappear from her hands as if it never existed.

She reaches out, to the side, hand grasping at empty air – what for? She turns, surprised by her own hand. Surprised by the hurt and betrayal she feels when her hand closes around nothing.

Her heart stutters, a painful gap in the rhythm it is supposed to maintain.

She feels it. She can acutely feel the betrayal of her own body as she falls apart. She pulls away from Josephine, stepping back and away. Her vision is changing, too fast for her to understand. Words fall away, sound is what it is and is not. People speak. She does not hear. Her vision is a serpent’s, a bird’s, a wolf’s, a bear’s, a doe’s – everything. Nothing. Her heart is too fast, too slow, too much at once.

Lavellan scrambles for anything, any shape to hold onto, one, just one. She needs _just the one._

She needs to be the woman because the Inquisitor is a woman on two legs with two hands and an Anchor. She needs to be the woman with the words, she cannot be anything else she is never supposed to be anything else and it is all rapidly falling apart, throwing itself out of her hands. She cannot catch them. She cannot hold them to her.

She backs away and feels a sound building in her throat, she needs to be away, she _can’t be here any longer_   -

But her body will not move because it is not her body any longer. Her joints aren’t right and she can feel her hands curling, protesting. Still the hands of a woman but she is not a woman, she is something else, something she does not yet understand what is she, _who is she, how can she be Lavellan if there is no Lavellan?_

She turns her head away, and sound is too loud, voices are sharp and the words are muddled, and she’s suddenly _afraid_ and _angry_ and it hits her, hard, unexpected.

She feels her lips curling over her teeth and a vibration in her bones.

Arms, around her, pulling her against a chest. The strange smell of magic and grass, fresh grass, wet grass, dew, mountain air, _cold_ – Good. It’s _Cole_.

She feels him, around her, and he jams his hat on her head, covering her eyes _good_ , and the sound is slightly muffled when he forces her to put her face against his throat. She lets her mouth part and feels the sound that slides out, and is angry at it. Cole’s hands are on her and he is saying something, she can feel his throat move against her lips and she wants to close her teeth but she cannot hurt him, she must never hurt him -

 _It’s okay._ A voice, a thought, slides into her head like a knife through ribs. _It’s okay_.

She feels something inside her bend, slowly, like hot iron, as she closes her mouth against Cole’s damp, baby-skin, against his collar bone.

Cole moves her, drags her, and her body won’t move, The joints are all wrong. She can feel her limbs trying to shift, trying to understand, to process – _who is she? What is she? Where is Lavellan? Why has Lavellan gone?_

Cole drags her, and she can feel the world moving underneath them, but she does not understand. Sounds and smells and sensations. They all hit her at every side and she can’t take it. It’s all falling apart so fast, today was a good day, but now she is nothing. Not even string. She’s unraveling and she can’t keep any of it in her hands, it’s all being pulled in every direction and it stings when she tries to hold on.

 _I know, I know. I can’t help you._ Cole, again. Her hands are claws, digging into her palms, as she curls her arms to her chest and tries to force herself to stand but she cannot because the sound of the mountains beats down on her shoulders and the wind blows her over and the sound of her own feet dragging against stone as Cole half-carries her away from the world is enough to make her scalp shrink against her skull and her lips pull back from her teeth. _I know who you need_.

A voice, deeper than sounds, speaks and Cole lets her go and hands, deeper than bones and skin, press against her.

She is suddenly thrown back through the corridors of memory to many hands and the dirt. The feeling of her skin exposed as she lay down and allowed the man over her to touch her and know her and she snarls, everything free to be angry because the thread is gone and it is all gone, going.

She snarls because – _because she can_.

But the hands press, one hand, large – warm, heavy, presses against her back. The single hand spans from shoulder blade to shoulder blade, and the other hand presses against her breast, against her breastbone. And they press together, and Cole’s hat slips on her head, lower, and something thick and heavy is put over her shoulders, pulled tight around her. The hands move, then press again through the fabric.

It encloses her, pulls her together as she thinks – the smell, a comforter, liquor, a little bit of blood, soap, metal, sweat, another smell, a musk, and something else, something intimately familiar, herself? Someone else, too -

_Lethallin, but more._

The voice, deeper than all others speaks and she tries to focus on it, tries to pull everything back but it hurts. It stings. She breathes and a sound like the terrified lowing of a calf balloons out of her throat and bubbles into her mouth and into the air. She cannot take it back.

It isn’t the right sound. She works her jaw and tries again. A higher sound, this time, longer, the drawn out dying cry of a wolf.

Better.

Again, she draws in breath, feels her throat click, and lets out one more long, weeping sound. Woman and bear and wolf and doe and snake and bird and _Lavellan_ , finally.

She makes the sound. She makes it again. And again, and again.

The voice continues to speak, to say something. The hands hold her together, and then finally pull her against something large, and warm. And she is aware that her limbs are all curled together, dozens of dead spiders, and her cheek finds skin and she pushes against it with her mouth and nose.

The hat falls off.

Lavellan opens her eyes to gray skin, and familiar scars. She opens her mouth and gnaws on skin and curls tighter and the arms around her are iron that is safe.

“ _Vashedan_.” The Iron Bull spits, as the words slowly trickle through her mind and arrange themselves into meaning. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What happened Cole. What the fuck happened? Her last letter from the fucking Graves said everything was fine. _What the fuck happened_?”

“They died.” Cole says and Lavellan’s eyes don’t move or focus properly, and everything blurs out until she tastes blood. She forces her mouth open and whines, long and loud. “They are gone. And there is nothing left to hold onto. No string to bind her and keep her. She’s losing her shape. She’s _becoming_. What is there left to define her, if her name is gone?”

 _No,_ her gut rolls, her heart pounds. _That isn’t true_.

She can feel Cole, a wavering presence, shift.

“ _Oh_.” Cole whispers.

 _Oh_ , Lavellan echoes in her mind as she turns and looks up at the Iron Bull with her wrong eyes. The Iron Bull is looking back at her and she knows, _she knows_ -

She feels her limbs start to loosen.

(There is one string left. One thing between her and the voice that cannot be her.)

The Iron Bull is not Iron when she slowly, painfully, makes herself move. Reaching out of the thick blankets the Iron Bull kept her together with and touches his skin and takes his arms – so warm, always so warm, and she’s always so cold – and arranges them around her. She touches her fingertips to the bite mark on his chest, and she isn’t steady enough to heal it, but she can feel her shape trying to change so she licks it once and retreats back into the blankets.

He squeezes her against himself. Good. Solid. A solid foundation.

Cole tells what she cannot and she is grateful as the words and worlds slip in and out. In and out. Through her fingers. Through her paws. Through her hooves.

“I should have been there.” The Iron Bull says, as a wave of comprehension hits her, “If they’ve been – they’ve been sitting on this information. I should have been there. Someone should have fucking told me. Fuck. Kadan, Kadan, I – I should have known. I would have told you. I wouldn’t have let them do that to you. _Vashedan_. I’m sorry. Kadan – “

And the wave retreats. She knows nothing. The Iron Bull’s hand is heavy and right as he strokes her hair, her head, behind her ears, along her jaw, over her muzzle. He takes her to his bed and he lies against the headboard and lets her lie against him, and he speaks but she does not understand his words. She presses the length of her body against him and wants to be warm because it is very cold and she cannot stop shaking.

“I don’t understand.” Cole is saying as the foaming wave of words crashes against her, “They hurt her. Why is she so hurt?”

Grief, something so terrible and awful. A feeling beyond names. Lavellan waits for the words to leave again. She needs them to go again.

“Because she didn’t know it was hurt.” The Iron Bull tells Cole. “Because she didn’t know what was happening. She didn’t realize that it wasn’t a real choice.”

But it was, she thinks as she is pulled under by the suffering without a name. _It was a choice, it was mine_.

She comes. She goes. The Iron Bull is always there.

When she surfaces again, she is unsure of how much time has passed. But she is – she is as much Lavellan as she can be. She feels, loose. Liquid. One wrong move and she will slide off the precipice and back into the churning abyss of voices and bones and skins.

_There is no one to stop her, now._

A voice in her grows wings and screams into her lungs. _Joy_.

“How long was I – ?” She whispers, voice hoarse, quiet. Her throat is locked down.

The Iron Bull pauses in the middle of stroking her hair.

“Almost two days.” He replies.

“What was I?” She turns, her cheek rubbing against the fabric of his trousers as she closes her eyes against the night’s silence. His hand is warm, solid and certain as his fingers slide under her chin, guiding her into rolling onto her back, and looking at him.

“You were nothing that wasn’t you. Nothing that wasn’t what you needed to become.” The Iron Bull tells her.

When he says it, she believes him.

“I am the last one.” She says, reaching for him. There is barely any strength to lift her arms. “I am the last of Lavellan.”

He nods, leaning down so she can slowly close her arms around his neck. He pulls her up, onto his lap and continues to run his hand up and down her arm. Her skin warms and cools with every pass of skin.

“If I am the last of Lavellan, then I am Lavellan.” She says. “So whatever I am, Lavellan must be.”

“Yes.”

“And – that means, I can not be wrong. I can not be right.”

“Yes.”

“Then what am I?”

“You just said. You are Lavellan.”

But Lavellan is an elf, a woman. She thinks. Lavellan is the Free Marches. Lavellan is not many skins howling together at once. Lavellan is not loose thread.

“I told you,” He says, “You became nothing that you weren’t already before.”

Lavellan considers this as best she can before letting the thought go, slip away like so much red silk thread.

“I believe you.”

-

Krem is – a man, except he has the parts of a woman. But he is a man and he prefers to be seen as such and Lavellan can and cannot understand because how does he _know_? Does Krem like women, does he like men? Does that make him like Dorian? Or like Cassandra? She does not understand but she wants to because this is simple.

Sex is simple. Bodies are _supposed_ to be simple.

But she cannot understand. Sometimes she thinks she understands. Krem is a man, but he is in the body of a woman, but how did he know that he is is a man?

Lavellan feels her insides twist.

She remembers the fall she became – secretly, privately, she thinks – _herself_ for the first time. She remembers she spent the fall in the shape of a bear, and she hunted and she followed her clan’s movements through forests. She was warm and the world smelled different. Things were simpler. She was happy. She ate a lot. And she hunted. She foraged. She under _stood_. She _understood_. Everything. Herself.

It was right.

She felt _right_.

But then she changed back and she could not hold _woman_ , and Keeper was angry because they had to force her to hold _woman_ and she wanted to be _bear_ again. And Keeper struck her, hard and told her -

_If you cannot return to yourself, stay a bear. Stay a bear. Stay a bear and be treated like a bear. Are you prepared for that?_

So Lavellan chose. She turned her back on _bear_ and returned to _woman_ and she could not stop crying for days. It hurt. It was a bleeding part of her that hurt.

 _I am the bear_ , she had told the Keeper. Her parents did not understand her crying. Her moaning, her throat half a bear and half a woman. The words and thoughts in her mind honeycombs and gaps between trees. She could not tell them.

How do you explain _the bear_ to someone who has never been _the bear_?

 _I am the bear_ , she could only say. I am _a bear_.

When she learned the shapes of raven and fox and wolf and snake and doe and halla she did not make the mistake of telling the Keeper – or anyone else – that again.

They took her clothes. It was cold. She shivered as they took her to the edge of the fire light. There was a hole.

 _You are not yourself. The spirit of the bear has taken you._ The Keeper said. _It must be driven out until you are yourself_.

No, she had thought and she had turned to her mother and her father and her hahren and her fellow students and her clansmen. And they looked at her through the faces of strangers.

They put her in the hole. She closed her eyes. Her mouth.

The Keeper stroked her hair.

 _Pray_.

Lavellan prayed. The dirt was cold when it hit her skin. It was silent except for fire and the distant sounds of halla whispering to each other. She prayed. She had never prayed so hard in her life.

It was dark. Did she sleep? Did she eat? The strings that keep her from the memory, that bind the memory in darkness and blurred secrecy, wont let her know.

She wanted to become the bear. It was so hard. Her skin fought her. Words left her. She could feel the sounds in her throat. The sounds of bear. Her sounds. Her voice.

But she could not change because if she changed she knew what would happen.

Lavellan prayed. And she hungered. She thirsted. She made herself foul in the dirt and she was bitterly ashamed. She must not be the bear. The gods were silent. She was wrong.

She was very, very sorry.

When they let her out, the Keeper kissed her, softly as she stood naked and cold and very much so _woman_.

Is it the same with Krem? Does he, too, have the man, the woman, fighting? Lavellan fights her shapes every day. It is easier to be them. It feels better to be them. She _is_ better when she is them. But she must not be them because she promised. They must never become her.

It is wrong. She is wrong.

Lavellan’s stomach twists and turns.

She will not ask Krem.

They have all chosen.

-

Lavellan watches Dorian, studies him. She watches him watch the soldiers train and tries to understand. She sometimes sees the way people watch Dorian, the same way Dorian watches the soldiers training, or some of the tanners at work, sometimes a few of the assassins as they walk the halls.

But she does not understand that.

She tries to think about it from the Iron Bull’s eyes. The Iron Bull understands these things. She understands the Iron Bull.

So she should understand these things.

Dorian is beautiful. She knows this. And he is smart and he is kind and he is very, very passionate and he is easy to talk to. Dorian is warm. Dorian cares. Deeply. About so many things, things she hasn’t even thought about.

But she cannot imagine wanting to touch him. Wanting to hold him. To have him. Under or over her. She cannot imagine any of that.

She can imagine him naked because she’s seen him naked. She can imagine going to bed with him, because she has. Dorian’s blankets are the warmest in Skyhold and the softest and she still doesn’t know how they got to be that way. But she cannot imagine the rest of it.

Dorian turns and catches her watching him watch others. He raises an eyebrow.

She smiles and goes to him.

She doesn’t think that Dorian knows – knows that she does not understand. Maybe he does. If it’s Dorian, she thinks she will be alright. Dorian is safe.

He is safe in a way that feels good. In a way that feels different from anyone else. And it has nothing to do with what parts he does and does not like.

Sometimes, after they spend a night drinking too much, or talking or studying or debating theory for too long, she’ll slide out of her clothes and crawl into his bed. He will sigh, take off his own clothes, and slide in with her.

Dorian likes to joke that his parents always dreamed that he’d settle down with a beautiful woman, but they probably had nothing like her in mind. She would make the same joke, if she was brave enough.

She feels safe when he puts his hand on her hip or her waist and kisses her forehead, before yawning and going to sleep – clumsily patting at her hip or her cheek. She feels safe in a bed with him, inside, so close that she could touch every part of herself to every part of him and feel his breathing.

Dorian is safe.

The Iron Bull is safe. But it is a different kind of safe. She feels safe around Dorian.

The Iron Bull _makes her_ safe. It’s not better or worse. Just different. Sometimes she wants one, sometimes she wants the other.

“See anything interesting, love?” Dorian asks, resting his hand on her hip and pulling her close as he leans against the railing. She leans against him and looks out and watches the soldiers training. She is reminded of Haven.

But better.

Both feet on the ground, she feels steady.

“Always. All the time.” She answers and he laughs, squeezing her hip. “You, for one.”

“Flatterer.” He says, smiling at her. She smiles back at him and they laugh, quietly, together. “That must mean you want something from me, if you’re so nice.”

“I can’t be nice?” She tilts her head.

“Oh, you can be very nice.” Dorian muses, “But you’re nice on purpose when you want something. I’m on to your little tricks. The last time you gave me that kind of witty remark to fan my ego, you ended up taking me sloshing through a bog. I lost _two_ pairs of good boots to that bog. Two. I’m not exactly made of money anymore, you know.”

Lavellan allows herself to feel guilty for a moment.

“I make it up to you, though.” She says.

Dorian chuckles, “You do. You really do. Impossible to stay mad at someone who’s given you a room and free reign in a _castle_. Who even has _castles_ anymore?”

“I do. The King of Ferelden does, too.”

“Castle is a polite way of saying smelly kennel.” Dorian retorts. “And yes, you do. It’s a very nice castle. Very isolated. Lovely view. Terrible reading selection though.”

“I keep telling you to just give the lists straight to Josephine.” Lavellan says. “She knows I don’t mind. I never say no to you.”

“You tell me no _all the time_.”

“That’s different. That’s because you’re being a tit.” Lavellan flicks her fingers at him, sending stray sparks of magic his way. Dorian flicks some static at her. “I never say no when it counts though.”

“No.” Dorian agrees. “You don’t.”

-

She could go to him. Lavellan probably should.

But she takes a moment, to stand here, to the side. To watch him, to observe him, to re-learn the shapes of his shoulders, the curve of his neck and throat, the angle of his horns, the sway of his stride and the pendulum like rhythm of his sword on his back as he moves, ruffling Grim’s hair, and throwing an arm out and saying something she doesn’t read on his lips because she’s so focused on the way his tattoos shift over his skin. She looks for breaks in the lines, new scars, healing wounds. She looks for aches and hesitations.

He would welcome her back, unquestionably, she knows. He would welcome her back, take her in open arms, and he would still -

As _she_ still -

He continues to wear the dragon’s tooth on her chord.

Lavellan reaches up and curls her hand around its partner in her hair.

She hurts him. She always hurts him. But she loves him. So much.

Did Solas leave because he loved her? Did Dorian leave because he loved her? Did any of them leave because they love her?

She left because she loves him. She left because she loves herself.

Lavellan left because if she stayed she would kill them both and she understands this, now. She is certain he understands that, as well. She hurt him by  leaving, but she had to.

The tooth is smooth and worn from her fingers, and she slides her thumb nail along a groove she’s slowly worn into it as her mind opens the corridors she has carefully left undisturbed and respected to allow in the sounds of her memories. Those weeks after – after.

After her death, her rebirth.

She passes the doors of her memory and basks in the door-shaped light of the pain she felt. Anger. So much anger and bitter, bitter _hate_ that didn’t settle right on her shoulders. Regret. Sorrow. Chagrin, too. Longing. Desire.

So many things.

She promised not to leave him. Is she like Solas, now, has she become the Wolf by becoming the wolf? She left in order to make peace with the parts she has lost, with the parts she has come to understand must be herself, but in the process did she become something she did not want to ever become?

Lavellan watches him.

Her heart whispers _go_ to him.

She lifts her foot, and feels like she’s stepping onto a narrow, swaying, dangerous rope bridge as she allows her feet to carry her forward.

 _Kadan_ , her soul whispers, the string in her chest unraveling and sliding out of her to snake across the space between her and him, pulling her like a cart behind a horse. Every part of her turns to him, and it is not walking so much as sliding – as one slides down a steep slope, or down a waterfall, pulled down by unnamable forces – towards him.

 _Kadan_ , her soul laughs as he sees her and his entire body changes. Opens. For her.

She feels herself opening for him and she smiles. It feels right, and it surprises her with how good it feels – different from every other smile she’s had since she left. The few and far between ones.

It feels beautiful.

-

She intercepts Gatt as he moves towards the Iron Bull. The sound of the ship’s collapse is still heavy in her bones. She can feel herself rising to the surface of this skin of _woman_. She allows it. This once. For him.

She intercepts Gatt and he pauses, eyes narrow, angry. She reaches out and with something frost, something lightning, everything scale and claw and feather, stops him.

He freezes, a hare in the eyes of a serpent. She reaches out with her hand that she allows to slip into something not-exactly-woman and touches him. She feels the jump of his pulse against her fingertips as she cups his throat.

“Gatt.” She whispers, voice rasping and harsh because this tongue and this throat were not meant for words but for blood and venom. “Do not test me.”

He will not hurt the Iron Bull. _Her Iron Bull_.

He is hers. If Gatt wishes to speak to him, he will ask her first. The Iron Bull was once _Gatt’s_ Iron Bull, but not anymore. Lavellan claims him. She would claim him in front of the Arishok, in front of every single member of the Qun. She would claim him in the face of _every god_. She claims him. Here. Now.

She has denied too much, let too much slip from her fingers, to not claim him.

She has made her choice, in that moment between death and survival.

Lavellan killed the Iron Bull.

The Iron Bull is born again.

 _Hers_.

She curls her fingers behind his ear.

“You will fail, Gatt.” She promises.

“ _Saarebas_.” Gatt spits. She knows the word refers to mages. The Iron Bull has taught her that. But she also knows it means _dangerous thing_.

Pride licks at the insides of her throat and chest. _Yes,_ the voice that is hers and is not hers croons on the inside of her ears. _Yes._

She smiles, fangs and teeth and scales and claws.

He says _saarebas_. What he means to say is _beast, monster._

Yes, she promises him. For the Iron Bull, for what is hers, for what she has so long been denying she will become herself. The truest and purest parts of herself that she is not allowed to be. She will become.

A promise.

-

Lavellan wakes to darkness and cold, and it is slightly better than sleep, she supposes.

Everything aches.

Lavellan closes her eyes.

“He makes it warm, good, right, living.” A voice that makes her think of breezes through fall branches says, close to her ear. Her eyes fly open and hands hold her down – a memory threatens to surge against her -

“No, wait. Not that.” The voice says and Lavellan recognizes him – the boy from Haven. The boy at the gates.

“Cole.” Her mouth is dry and her tongue is foreign in her own mouth. When isn’t it?

“You remembered.” Cole blinks at her.

“You saved them.” She replies. “Of course I remember.”

Cole shakes his head – shakes himself like a dog, then pauses, head tilting towards something -

“He wanted to be here. With you. He made a promise. He signed a contract. He’s yours. It should be his body, here, not yours. You needed him. Where was he? What use is he to you if he is never there when you need him most? Is she warm enough? Why is no one with her? When will she wake up? _Fuck_.”

Lavellan blinks and Cole shakes himself again.

“He watched it fall, come apart.” Cole lowers his head, fidgeting, picking at his own fingers. “Something inside of him – stone, iron, bone, he isn’t sure yet – cracked. Right down the center. Not a big crack. But enough. Enough. It’s going to come out. Why doesn’t he want it to come out? It was good the first time.”

Her mind is fuzzy and she can’t – she tries to work out what he’s saying, and parts of the phrases pull at cotton-fog memories in her head.

Cole disappears and reappears, it makes her head hurt right between her eyes.

“I’m sorry.” Cole says and holds out a shallow bowl for her. He supports her head and brings it to her lips.

The water is warm and she feels an infinite amount better.

“When Cullen brought you back, he wanted to take you from him. He doesn’t know why.” Cole tells her. “He wants to see you. But he can’t.”

“Who?” Lavellan tries to understand what Cole is telling her. It’s hard.

“He promised. He promised that he’d be with you. He isn’t supposed to break promises. That isn’t who he is.”

A face gently slides through her memories.

“The Iron Bull.” She whispers.

Cole nods.

“He wants to be here. But he can’t fit. He wants to see you. But he’s also afraid. How can he face you after all that’s happened? _Brave saarebas_.”

“I chose this.” She frowns. “I chose to stay behind. It isn’t his fault.”

“You shouldn’t have had to choose that. If he had been better, if he had more information, if he had seen it coming – “ Cole suddenly stops speaking. “If he had just been _there_ when you needed him.”

-

When Lavellan sees the Qunari in the mirrors, in the ruins of what was once – could have been hers -

She is hit in the chest by too many memories at once.

The first is Abelas. She remembers, standing there, by the Well of Sorrows. And she had looked at him, fully, up close for the first time. He was beautiful. And she had been thrown by a blast of desire that she had never known, and perhaps will never know again. Looking at his long, lean legs, the powerful spread of his shoulders, the way the metal and leather had moulded to his body – listening to the fluid and pattern melody of his voice, his speech -

She wanted that. She wanted him.

She wanted to _be_ that. To _be_ him.

All the things she could do if she had any of that. All the things her people could be if they had it. She was momentarily angry – how could the sentinel elves have hoarded this all to themselves, knowing of the suffering beyond? But it was nothing compared to the longing.

If she had any of that, if she had that muscle, that height, that life, that knowledge she would not be in that position of choice. She would not be there.

If she had any of that, she would never lose anyone she loves again.

The second memory is the Storm Coast, watching the dreadnought sink. The sound it made, audible as part of the churning waves crashing onto the shore and uneven rocks of the sea.

The Iron Bull had looked so far away then. As if she could not reach him. A barrier of stone between them.

Even his voice was far away, when he spoke to his men, as he mounted his horse, as they left to return to Skyhold empty handed.

Ah, she had thought, I have lost him, now. I have killed him.

Third, the memory of the way the Iron Bull spat the word _tal-vashoth_ at her after they faced the assassins. Bitter. Angry. Loathing. Fear.

Not him, Lavellan thinks even though she _knows_ the Iron Bull is somewhere worlds and mirrors behind, her eyes and ears at Halamshiral while she is here. _Not him, everything else, not him_.

The voice that is her own, that she is realize has always been her own, echoes through her bones, from the vertebrae of her spine to the tips of her ribs.

She is hit with the image of the Iron Bull charging out of a mirror towards her, weapon raised. And she is blinded with pain. A new pain that is not the pain of the Anchor she has been living with for the past few months, or even the pain of knowing that her life is rapidly approaching its end – by Anchor or by force.

Her heart cracks in her chest, and the dragon’s tooth is heavy where it knocks against her neck and shoulder.

If it was him – she would be dead right now.

She can take betrayal from anyone but him. It would hurt from anyone, of course. But it would not kill her. Not so silently, not so softly or brutally. Not so sharply.

She feels power surging through her bones, through the Anchor, widening the cracks in her skin and nerves and mana channels as she raises her hand and lets it out in a single blast of denial.

Not him.

-

The Iron Bull makes it easier – he makes it easier for her to stay one shape. One self, like she’s supposed to be.

“The article is a joke.” Cole tells her.

“I know.” Lavellan replies. But it’s important. It’s the Iron Bull’s choice. So she will not leave it out. Not if she can help it.

His full name is The Iron Bull, and he keeps it, even now.

“They couldn’t make him into the weapon they wanted.”

 _My liar_ , Lavellan thinks. _Mine_.

“No. They couldn’t.”  Lavellan leans back underneath the tree and slowly pulls out the worn leather pouch she has been keeping close to her breast.

“Is it time?” Cole asks, everything about him air and thought as he slips past her sight.

“Yes.” Lavellan says and braces herself, gently taking out the charred piece of horn from the pouch and resting it on top of the leather for all the world to see. She pulls out lengths of string from her pocket. Black.

“They were waiting for you.” Cole says and she looks up, he has arranged a half circle of things she wanted but did not know where to get or even ask for in front of her. Bark and petals, feathers and powders. “It is time.”

“Yes.” Lavellan says, and winds the strings around her fingers, ready to weave a working. “Be silent now, Cole.”

 _Yes_ , Cole answers her, turning to sunlight and dust.

Lavellan weaves the string around her fingers, and captures things in it one by one. Promises. Thoughts. Memories. The knots in her head become knots in the string, out in the world, solid and tangible evidence of the chaos that spins itself inside of her.

She looks at the bone and remembers the dragon. She remembers the sound she did not hear when he pushed her aside, sent her flying away and was sent flying, himself. She thinks about the ringing in her ears, then. She thinks about the many ways his back looks in the different lights from around the world, as he blocks the world from getting to her. The sound of his voice, which she can pick out of a crowd if she just _thinks_. She thinks about the way that he introduces everyone to her and the way he makes it so easy for her to say things.

Lavellan whispers prayers she isn’t sure she believes in anymore out of habit. Andruil for courage, Mythal for truth. Elgar’nan for valor. Dirthamen and Falon’din for love. Sylaise for patience. June for strength. Ghilan’ain for guidance. Fen’harel for protection.

Her gods have always been silent. Her gods have always been absent. They have left her to this world, this body, this knot of words that are not words.

But they, and the unknown self that is the maker of the Anchor, have brought her to him.

Is this an act of divine power? Is this fate? Is this inevitability?

Lavellan thinks of all the times she has watched him fall and not get up. She thinks of the way his voice cracked and the way his body turned to drained and bleached driftwood as he blew the horn.

She won’t let him look like that again.

The voice, deeper than hers, inside of her that is and is not her – and perhaps it is so loud because it is meant to be heard, perhaps the Keeper was wrong? The Keeper can be wrong. Leaders can be wrong. She has been wrong so many times. _The Keeper could have lied_. – speaks.

“Alright, I’ll bite. What’re you doing?”

Lavellan looks up at him and feels dawn inside her chest.

The words are – they aren’t ready yet. But this will be, soon.

She won’t let him hurt again. She won’t let him look bleached and brittle.

She won’t lose him.

-

Halamshiral is a slap to the face.

The entire Winter Ball is a slap to the face, a back handed slap. Knuckles splitting skin over the cheek.

She stands there, in the middle of this gilded farce erected over the blood and bones, wearing the clothes of shemlen military, bearing the name of a shemlen military force, and the name of the shemlen god. She stands here, a tool for shemlen wars of politics and greed, surrounded by servants with her eyes and ears and hands and feet and blood, all of them not meeting her eyes.

How could she have ever believed that she was anything on her own?

How many months ago did the Empress of this stab-wound of a country _burn_ all the elves of Halamshiral to nothing? How many months ago did she wipe out an entire city of elves with a single word?

How many clans died here? How much of _her_ birthright does the Empress hoard in her gilded halls like trophies of a hunt?

Halamshiral is a slap to the face, where she must speak like a shemlen – carefully forcing her Dalish accent away and down – and hold the shape of a tame woman. Where she must make nice with people who fuck elves in corners and kill their bastard children just because they can. Here, she must smile and be pretty to men who call her rabbit and knife-ear, and courtesy to women who live off of the backs of her fellows. _And she has to keep them all alive and pick one to lead this Empire of her dead?_

It’s a _joke_. A _farce_.

Cassandra and Dorian slide into it like ducks in water. Cassandra, reluctantly, but somehow it is still in her favor. Dorian, naturally, as if he never left. Vivienne

Varric is at home in the way Varric is wherever he goes. Rogue and story teller. _Bard_.

She finds hints of Cole all around, invisible like she wants to be. She catches him watching everything from the second story above the ballroom once, but he looks at her with so much sorrow that she hesitates to go to him. And then he is gone.

Solas haunts the edge of a balcony, amused and somehow so very at home in all of this in ways she can’t understand.

She hasn’t seen Sera all night and Lavellan hopes that at least one of them is doing some good here. How many people here are actually Jennies?

Blackwall is conspicuously absent from her sight, most likely hiding with the rest of the Inquisition soldiers and waiting for Cullen’s signal.

The Iron Bull looks – strange. He looks strange, covered up. He looks _constrained_. She finds him in the garden, below a window and she just wants to be out there with him rather than in here with – the rest.

He would be so good in here. He knows how to read people. He knows how to get people to do what he wants.

Lavellan knows how to get information out of people and she knows how to keep herself safe. She doesn’t know anything about shemlen politics or small talk.

Her head and her heart hurt.

Hopefully that’s all that will be hurting by the end of the night.

-

The sky is – the sky is beautiful. The colors here are beautiful. Somehow stronger than anywhere else. Is this what they lost?

She swears that both her hands clench, opening and closing loosely. But it cannot be so.

She watched him take it.

She lies on her back and it hurts, it hurts so much it does not hurt. Her own breathing is loud to her. Distant. Somehow – it is no longer her breathing. She hears it as if she were hearing someone next to her.

This is happening to someone else. It is not her.

She turns her head towards the mangled mess of – of whatever it is. Armor, leather, bone, flesh, blood.

Somehow, it surprises her. She had watched him take it. Looked him in the eye, and watched him. She had looked at the ruined mess of the thing and watched it happen.

But it surprises her, looking at it.

 _Oh_ , she thinks as she listens to herself breathe from somewhere far away, somewhere in the sky where all the colors are stronger, bolder than ever.

The rest of the sounds are going in and out. In and out.

She turns her head back towards the sky because it is better than looking at her own mess.

“It hurts.” Cole whispers. “I wanted to come. I tried to. He stopped me. I don’t know how. But he stopped me. I couldn’t get through, no matter what I made myself into.”

“Elgar’falon.” She whispers as Cole’s face floats into her view. “You are blocking the sky.”

Cole’s face is frightened.

“It’s hurting you. But – you don’t know that. You don’t – nothing hurts you anymore.”

“No.” She feels the words sliding out of her lips, but she can’t really hear them. She is beyond hearing. “I can’t be hurt. Nothing could hurt me more.”

“That’s not true.” Cole says, face turning serious. “He’s coming. He’s coming for you. Wait for him.”

“He just left.” Lavellan says.

“Not _him_.” Cole shakes his head, hair swinging over his eyes. “ _Him_.”

He pushes down on her chest and she wheezes.

“Oh.” Suddenly it feels like she’s falling. Or the world is falling. Things seem far away, as if she was looking at the world through a telescope. “Oh.”

“See. It can hurt more.” Cole says, then shakes himself. “I’m – I can’t. I’m sorry. It’s all bleeding together.”

“It’s bleeding out.” She whispers, and feels her eyes sliding shut. “I don’t want him here.”

“You do.”

 _It’s going to hurt him._ She doesn’t know if she says it, or thinks it. But Cole knows. He always knows.

“That’s love.” Cole says.

 _Yeah,_ her voice slurs in her head, _that’s him_.

She swims in and out of consciousness, but he’s there. Cole was right. He came. Her mind kicks against the heavy weight of lethargy that’s settled over her.

The Iron Bull is a shadow over her, face wild and desperate with pain. She wants to smile for him. She wants to touch him, smooth the lines of his face and tell him it’s alright because at least if she’s gone she can’t hurt him anymore. It’s okay, the Iron Bull. It doesn’t even hurt anymore.

She fades out for a while, she doesn’t know how long. Maybe not that long because he is holding her and running and he is saying things.

She raises her hand, or her hand raises itself, and her fingers clumsily curl themselves around one of the leather straps of his chest harness – she thinks her fingers were trying to catch the dragon’s tooth – and she feels giddy when the words finally, _finally_ let her catch them and give them to him.

 _I love you_ , she says. Because – because it’s true. Because she was wrong when she thought it was better not to say it. Because she’s most likely going to die and she wants to at least do this for herself.

She says it because it’s alright, now. It’s alright. She is alright.

It no longer hurts.

 _I love you_ , she tells him, finally and feels indescribably happy as she looks at the swaying tooth, the saturated sky, and the blurry and somehow still at the same time sharp planes of his face. More than anything – I love you.

How could she have ever thought she could keep that to herself?

It was always him. It will always be him.

She chooses _him_.

 


End file.
